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WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT?
WHAT YOU SHOULD WRITE WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? The importance of this question. The beginner instinctively pays little heed to his story themes. He feels that he may follow his own inclination, inasmuch as the range and variety of subjects successfully dealt with by story writers seem limitless. This impression, however, is dangerously misleading. Whether viewed as a work of art or as a piece of merchandise for the magazine market, the genre is definitely restricted in more respects than any other form of fiction. Whoever exceeds its bounds is almost certainly foredoomed to produce a story that is either ineffective or unsalable or both. The theme is limited in three directions. There are many restraints upon the theme. The most important of these may be classified under three heads: • Those set by the story form. • • Those set by the writer's knowledge and beliefs. c. Those set by his audience. • Not a few restraints are merely commercial; and these we shall consider in the last chapter of this book. a. Limits set by the story form. Recall what the short story is: a dramatic narrative with a single effect. Two ideals are to be realized in one form, and each of them is to give its own peculiar determination to this form. i. The theme must yield a plot. Human conduct without the developing crisis will not turn the trick, and the most terrific crisis without the struggling, controlling force of human nature at work in it will also fail. To be persuaded of this, study that wonderfully accurate and sympathetic medley of middle Western sketches by William Allen White, entitled In Our Town. ' The majority of these are not short stories, either in form or by intent; but some of them are, notably the one entitled By the Rod of His Wrath. This is a terrific picture of the silent, crushing power of righteous public opinion. Here stands John Markley, who defied the decencies by putting aside his wife in middle age for a brazen office girl. And here stand John Markley's old friends, facing the moral crisis of having to be loyal either to him or to his outraged wife (and through her to their own professed ethics). The story tells how they decided and lived up to their decision. Loose in its informality of narrative, it is none the less a genuine short story, flawless except for an insufficient dramatic emphasis upon someone of the many intense episodes in it. Now contrast with it The Young Prince, in the same collection. This, you will instantly find, is only a swift little biography of a cub reporter. There lurks in it no complication, tragic or comic, wherein the Prince's loyalty, his pride, his sense of humor, his courage, or any other moral trait works out its own salvation. The picture is true; and there is some action, but not the sort that makes drama. n. The theme, in order to produce a single effect, must be one which can be adequately handled within the span of a single perusal. It was Poe who pointed out this peculiar limitation. Lacking it, the novel "depriN es itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal modify, annul or contract . . . the impressions of the book. But simply cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. " This psychological fact quite sharply defines the pure external magnitude of the short story, though not nearly so much as one might imagine from a survey of the magazines. For reasons discussed elsewhere, editors have limited the story to an ordinary maximum of 8, 000 words (in England about 6, 000) and they sometimes deceive themselves into believing that this measures the natural or proper size. As a matter of fact, it bears only a remote relation to the artistic (the psychological) maximum, which is fixed entirely by the particular theme and the particular reader. The single effect can be perfectly attained in a narrative of 40, 000 words, if only the theme is sufficiently obvious and simple, and the reader is exceptionally intelligent. Henry James' ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, is of that length, and certainly a person of concentration will derive from it a unity of impression no less pronounced than that which he gains from Poe's very brief Morella. No doubt, the gum-chewing stenographer who devours the literary offspring of Mr. Robert W. Chambers might have her difficulties with James' work. But this is only another way of my saying that the permissible length of a story depends upon the number of ideas and effects which its reader can easily carry in mind at once; and this, of course, varies with the reader's mental equipment. If he happens to be an Australian bushman, he reaches his limit at the twentieth monosyllable. And if he is an eminent mathematician, he may read a hundred full-grown modern novels in quick succession and get from the whole group only a single effect, namely that of tedium. This individual difference is reckoned with roughly by magazines which cater to widely different classes of readers. A pretty accurate index of the public an editor seeks is given in the length of stories he favors. If he prefers 2, 500-word varieties, he is certainly appealing to a shallower type of mind than his colleague up the street does who handles 5, 000-word goods. It is the average length, of course, that is significant; and variations of a few hundred words are wholly meaningless. But, with some innocuous exaggeration, we might speak of the 2, 000-word reader, the 4, 000-word reader, the 8, 000-word reader, and the 15, 000-word reader. Now, it is the likings and capacities of the first three species which define the practical limits of most contemporary stories. ii. This 8, 000-word limit sets three restrictions upon the theme. It excludes all subjects which involve: a. An intricate plot, /3. Elaborate staging, and Y. Detailed interpretation. a. Intricacy. No theme can be used whose plot contains more features and complications than can be clearly presented and worked through within the space limit above mentioned. And conversely, what can be adequately depicted in less than 2, 000 words is almost certain to be no dramatic narrative, and hence no short story. For a dramatic narrative involves a large number of factors, the baldest account of which generally consumes more than that number of words. Staging. This is the least important and most plastic of the restrictions. By the staging is meant that much of the total setting which is actually presented in detail to the reader. Often the setting is much fuller than the staging; just as in the early drama, where the setting, say a forest in Warwickshire, was represented in the staging by a single plucked bough, and a silent character on the scene symbolized by a cloak flung over a stick propped up in a corner. As with plays, so with short stories. Some of them demand very little explicit development of the scenic circumstances under which their plots grow, while others, like Markheim, owe their very life to the vivid fullness of the environing conditions. Now, it is only with reference to these latter themes that staging becomes a serious problem; and, as they are not very common, the student need not pay much attention to the difficulty they raise. Let him learn only the two general rules by which they are rejected: Atheme is unfit for a short story if its plot calls for a staging so elaborate that there remains for the development of the dramatic narrative not space enough within the assigned limits of the story's total length. Atheme is unfit also if its plot calls for the extensive staging of situations which interrupt the dramatic narrative. For further comment on this topic see the chapter on integrative intensifiers. y. Interpretation. The equivocation in this term must be cleared away before we can discuss the point here to be made. By 'interpretation' artists frequently mean their own personal rendering of an idea or a scene or a play. When, for instance, an actor gives his interpretation of Hamlet, he represents the dismal Dane, not as Hamlet himself may have been, nor yet as Shakespeare may have conceived him, but as the player himself believes the character is most truly or most dramatically exhibited. Again, a writer is said to interpret New York when he gives you a picture of the town as he sees it. Thus, in The Claws of the Tiger, Gouverneur Morris offers a powerful interpretation of the lifewrecking power and unspeakable vice of Tammany Hall. Now this meaning of 'interpretation' ought to be discarded; and fait;the excellent reason that, as soon as you apply it consistently, you strip it of significance. Any and every account becomes an interpretation. A private letter sketching the ravages of mumps in the family is an interpretation. A morsel of gossip about the rector's cook eloping with the ice man is interpretation. For does not the reporter give you a picture of affairs as he perceives them? And does he not present them in the form he thinks best? He assuredly does. But in so doing he does not rise above the artistic level of a camera; for the camera too renders the landscape as it appears from its own private point of view and as sensed by a film of peculiar chemical make-up. Therefore, to speak of interpreting a story theme, in this loose sense, is to speak of nothing special. You do not graze any technical problem of artistic expression. The word has, however, another and a deeper meaning. To discern the significance of something, to clarify that which is obscure, to construe something which one's audience is in doubt about; all that is genuine interpretation. It is a deliberate intellectual enterprise. Its purpose may not be the preacher's; it may be more akin , to the scientist's. To finish with a Q. E. D. , like Euclid, and to let the reader use the inference as he will, may. be the author's one desire. And, when it is, the story gains mightily. There are few specimens of truly great stories which are wholly devoid of this quasi-scientific demonstration. Markheim conspicuously proves that there is always a way of checking a wicked habit, albeit a desperate way. Moonlight proves dramatically that, to sympathize with an emotion, one must experience it or something like it. Howells'A. Circle in the Water proves in its own style that love alone arrests the consequences of wrong. And so on, with only occasional exceptions, unless we take into account simple love and adventure stories. It is pretty clear that, though interpretation is not essential to the short story, it elevates anff-glorifies the form as nothing else can. So defined, the limitations under which interpretation suffers in the short story form are apparent. And the first of these is the one which Brunetiêre had in mind when he wrote that the theme of the short story must be 'socially insignificant'. This phrase is inexact and needlessly damning, but it does point toward a profound distinction between short story and novel. There are many human truths which resemble Euclid's first theorems in that they are simple, fundamental, and proved in a few words. But there are many more which can be compared only with the propositions of integral calculus; for they are accessible only through a labyrinth of details. It is a simple truth that public opinion can, without force or fury, crush even a rich and powerful man who flouts it. It is a very obscure and intricate proposition that will tell the whole truth about the rights of a man to divorce a wife he is weary of. Some very intelligent people will say, in great heat, that the man has no right; and other no less intelligent people will assert vehemently that it is criminal to compel anybody to remain wedded against his or her wish. All of which proves that there are two sides to the question, and maybe twenty, and that nobody quite understands them all. Now the former truth, about the still power of the public, can be comprehended within the compass of a few thousand words; hence it is suited to the story form, and White has successfully employed it thus in By the Rod of His Wrath. But the second truth has not yet been demonstrated conclusively even in the longest novel; and it may never be, so multitudinous are the human interests which play into the problem of divorce, and so delicate is their weighing. Reason enough, then, for forbidding it to the story writer! And so, though it is raised in the reader's mind by White's story, White does not develop it at all. The defect in Brunetiêre's verdict now appears. It is not the social insignificance of John Markley's fate that led White to depict it in a short story instead of in a novel. Surely, few crises are of deeper importance to the individual and of wider consequence to the world than that which the village faced when Markley cast off his wife. What is there anywhere in Balzac or Thackeray that more deeply concerns society? Would the author have given us a false notion of its importance, had he expanded the story of it into a novel? By no means. Well then, why did he not make a novel of it? Simply because it could be perfectly demonstrated in a short story. When all is said and done, it is the very same reason that dissuaded Euclid from expanding his famous proposition about the angles of a triangle into a 100, 000word volume. A hundred and odd words did the business to perfection; and Euclid was too wise to exceed perfection. He was not influenced by the fact that the truth about the triangle is of prodigious social importance. Had he done so; had he made the telling of the story commensurate with the value of the truth in it, forty thick tomes would not have contained it. But, happily for the human race, the value of what men have to say has not the slightest connection with the fullness of its recounting. A truth, whether of geometry or of constitutional law or of every-day human nature, whether syllogistically or dramatically phrased, whether precious or trivial, fixes its own number of words pretty definitely. If it is intricate, it will demand a great array of language; if simple, one sentence may make it as clear as the sun in a cloudless sky. Here is, at bottom, no mystery of art or logic; it is only the primitive virtue of straightforward speech. This virtue imposes a restraint upon the interpretations which the short story writer may indulge in; a restraint, by the way, which few beginners heed or, heeding, endure with patience. It is this: Do not attempt to interpret any matter which society finds problematic today If the human race has not yet found a clear answer to a question of social consequence, it is because the question is entangled and dark, or at least two-sided. And whatever is so cannot be presented in such a manner as to produce that single effect which is the inalienable charm and right of the short story. b. The theme as limited by the writer's knowledge and beliefs. Before dipping into this matter, the reader will kindly call to mind that we are now considering the artistic ideals of the short story, not the commercial possibilities. Were he to overlook this fact, he would be perplexed by the two rules now to be framed, the first of which is: i. The writer must possess genuine knowledge of the matter actually employed in the dramatic narrative; but need not know any more. This rule meets with scant reverence. A horde of istories favored by editors exhibit appalling ignorance, not only of elementary facts about human nature but even about the habits and customs of the times, places, and social castes about whom the authors tabulate. ' And a much larger multitude of stories give evidence that their authors, after taking pen in hand, have asked some Public Library assistant about the flora and fauna of the Tahiti Islands?and scanned Baedeker to find out whether Russians drink vodka through a straw. But all this only goes to show what everybody knows, namely that, within cer alf fairness to editors, it should be added that the better magazines are admitting fewer stories of this sort than they did twentyfive years ago. But within the past twelvemonth at least half a dozen absurdities have been published. taro bounds, gold-brick literature is a marketable commodity, no less than gold-brick stocks and gold-brick religion are. Also, it goes to show that few people can write good stories, and of those who can still fewer can pour them forth on contract, month in, month out. And so the wretched editors—Heaven comfort them!—have to take what they can get. The other clause in the rule is equally ignored. Even experienced writers often wade through volumes and volumes of sociological statistics, as a preliminary to contriving a story, let us say, about a Madison Street sweatshop. And I have heard promising young writers sigh, almost tearfully, that they could never hope to write psychological character stories like James' because the poor dears had not mastered the other James' psychology. Now, this despair is a baseless superstition. The truth is, most facts that are important to scientists are only distantly connected with those which help to make a situation dramatic. These latter are exclusively those which the persons in the dramatic situation are directly aware of. The sweater's kicks and curses, the garlicky air, the flat, high voice from the top of a sick workman's filling lungs, the twenty cents clipped off the week's pay for the crooked r stitching, —these are the raw material of sweatshop drama. For it is they that men perceive, they that provoke to wrath, they that move victims to slay or to fling themselves from bridges. The writer familiar with a4 such " factors may dispense with the others. For this reason, the writer in search of material must turn, not to libraries nor to schools and laboratories, but to intimate every-day affairs. Other more dignified sources of truth will give him his bearings in the midst& life and sharpen his eyes toward good and evil. But neirel: can they teach him how to make his characters life-like, his situations real, and his climaxes tense. There remains a second limiting rule: ii. The writer is free to develop a theme which he does not believe. But he must understand how and why the characters in the story feel and act as they do. And he must portray the reasons and causes of their acts sympathetically. If he cannot, he must give up the theme. This would scarcely be worth mentioning, but for the loose talk about 'sincerity' and `earnestness' which many excellent critics, and even writers, are wont to indulge in. We have heard Chesterton assuring us that good fiction comes only from doctrinaires; and other milder exaggerators are constantly proclaiming that even the lightest tale, in order to be good art, must `have a message', or 'point a moral', or come from the author's soul. And so, every season under such promptings, comes a host of fresh learners striving to pack their intensest beliefs into little stories. To forestall the harmful consequences of their misunderstanding, let them dwell upon the vast, conspicuous difference between belief (or moral earnestness) and sympathetic imagination. This difference must be apparent to anybody who dreams vividly or retains some shred of early youth's power of fantasy. The mind so constituted perceives the unreal as real and the preposterous as plausible. While the spell lasts, nothing mars the perfect reality of its presentments. Fiend, abysses, diamonds like hens' eggs, the men of Mars, —they are all, for the swift instant, just what they seem to be. Reason, paralyzed for the nonce, does not challenge their status; nor does the acid of common sense eat into their tenuous stuff. And so, in one sense, they convince us, and we believe in them. 13ut they are not convincing in the more proper meaning of the word. They do not lay hold of us as the ideas inHereticslay hold of Chesterton, or as those in Widowers' Housesmaster Bernard Shaw. They are not faiths which grow out of life and, in turn, regulate it; they merely possess such coherence and vivacity that, while we contemplate them by themselves, we cannot doubt them. As soon as we withdraw from their little sphere and reason about them, they lose their power over us. Consider, for instance, the tales of Poe. What is there in The Fall of the House of Usher that one eould believe with a doctrinaire's fine frenzy? Absolutely nothing. The whole somber creation is a picture, nothing more. But Poe dreamed it so clearly, and the disasters of it hang together in every minute detail so organically that the catastrophe possesses all the fleeting persuasiveness of a nightmare. While you read it, you inhabit a strange land. And the emotions which this, your bewildering translation, induce are all that you ask of the story teller. If he can produce this illusion of reality, you do not care what he believes personally about anything. There is no denying that a story shaped by some lofty purpose often rises to heights attained by no idle play of the imagination. Not even the hilarity of an 0. Henry nor his smother of puns mitigates the grim earnestness of An Unfinished Story;and few of his more light-hearted tales linger in the memory as does this attack upon the employer who underpays his shop-girls. And yet, when all is said, moral earnestness is only a strengthener, and high purposes are seven-league boots, at best, in the realm of the story writer. They improve, but they do not create. They intensify, but they do not furnish the material of brief fiction. Excellent they are, but not essential. In proof of this, many an author can testify that some of his most artistic, most successful works have developed themes which he disliked, characters whom he scorned, and ideas which he could not seriously enter tain. I have been told that there is a story writer of renown who deliberately shelves every plot of his which stirs him deeply in a serious way. And another echoes what Frohman says of the plays he reads: "Everyone that I like personally is sure to fail. " c. The theme as limited by the reader. It is difficult to separate the artistic restrictions from the commercial, in this case. For what a reader likes he will buy, and what he dislikes he will leave on the bookstand. Furthermore, he is much more interested in the topic of a book than in its style or the opinion it voices or the kinds of people appearing in it. His first decisive query is this: What does the story narrate, adventure or romance or a humorous situation or the inner life of a character? And if he wishes catch-breath deviltry, no amount of fine speech or pretty turns will make a simple love story attractive to him. For this reason, his influence will be discussed in the chapter on the business of story writing. He has nothing to do with the art of writing, but only with the art of selling the written. 3. Available story material. Thus far we have been indicating what is not good story stuff. It is now time to ask what is good. Theme. There is no positive quality which marks the available theme. You may, if you choose, show dramatically that black is white, or that women should vote, or that virtue is an illusion, or that love is a lovely thing, or that lone widows ought never buy mining stock, or that things as they are aren't as they should be, or anything else. In brief, all e can say is that the theme may be whatever permits of dramatic development with a single effect. But this tells nothing about the particular content and quality of the idea. Plot. Here we begin to see light, and under it the story material shows up pretty definite. Almost every experienced reader senses—at least vaguely—the quality which makes ideas and incidents and characters good for dramatic narrative. This quality has many names: one is 'human interest', another is 'emotional intensity', a third 'truth about human nature', and a fourth 'character revelation'. But these are all too hazy, and the last is certainly too narrow. The first points at the truth but does not attain it. Editors assure us that 'human interest' is the flavor and perfume of every excellent story. But what is human interest? How shall we know it when we meet it? Has it a formula, that the tyro of Grub Street may make it to order? Profound silence in editorial offices! And the literary critics are not much noisier. The truth is, no clear analysis of this nebulous literary virtue has been rendered. But the way has been cleared by contemporary psychologists. Their studies of attention and interest are suggestive. c. Interest. Between simple attention and interest stretches a wide gulf. A person attends to things more or less passively. A loud noise, a flash of light, a strange voice, indeed almost anything different from what we happen to be noticing at the moment, will draw our minds in that peculiar way which is called attending. Not so, however, do things compel us to be interested in them. The direction of our interest is set largely by our own wills and our beliefs. We give attention, but we take interest. In the first case there is a yielding, in the second a seizing. When interested in something, we lay hold of its features. andwe actively think about them, in some of their bearings. Are you interested in the ventures of a slack-wire artist? Then you surely do more than follow his shaking march across the stage. You wonder how he will manage to keep his balance after dropping his pole. You try to figure out what move he will make next. You judge his chances of breaking a leg. You reflect upon the patience and skill his feats represent. In short, you think hard. And so it is with great affairs, too. If you take interest, say, in immigration or in divorce or in Roosevelt, you do not merely attend as you might to the pop of a toy pistol. You think, think, think about causes and consequences, about the perils and the benefits, about the right and the wrong of it all. Here we have the infallible psychological mark of `human interest'; the interesting thing is the thing which provokes thought. d. What provokes thought? This query arises at once. For, unless it is answered, the above description will not enlighten us much. Fortunately, though, our pragmatic philosophers have hit upon its solution. Thought is provoked by any situation from which our instincts and our established habits do not automatically deliver us. It offers us a new critical weapon which cleanly cuts the fit from the unfit material of artistic fiction. But let us first inspect the fact itself. Most people think only when they have to. This incontestable fact you may utter with a cynical sneer, if you have not reflected upon it. But if you have, you know that the arrangement is not so bad as it sounds. In-. deed, it is pretty useful, taken by and large. It is not ideal, to be sure; in a perfectly appointed world we should never think at all but should only enjoy life, solving all problems mechanically, as we dislodge dust from the eyes and digest our food. Seeing the universe is what it is, though, a place full of change and entanglements, so complex that no machinery, however intricate and well fashioned, could do the right thing always at the right time, this painful and difficult activity of thinking must be invoked. Whatsoever we can manage through some other agency we do so manage. And, if thinking is imperative for a while, we make that while as brief as possible. The baby thinks in learning to walk, but as soon as his feet move surely he refrains from cogitation. He thinks over his speech, too, but quickly he outgrows that, transforming discourse from an intellectual performance to a reflex habit. And he never thinks about the order and choice of words again, unless they give rise to some new, unforeseen perplexity; as, for instance, they might, were he suddenly afflicted with stammering or stage fright. This is no scandal, it is a great convenience. Thanks to it, men are able to concern themselves with fresh enterprises and hence to progress. Indeed, civilization is a titanic monument to thoughtlessness, no less than to thought. The supreme triumph of mind is to cligpense with itself. For what would intellect avail us, if we could not withdraw it from action in all the habitual encounters of daily life? Suppose we had to think how to lace our shoes and steer sandwiches to our mouths! And what if we had to set going the machinery of Aristotle's logic whenever we sought to say "Good morning"! e. The thought-provoking situation is what we call a problem. This is in accord with common usage, and also with philosophy. Its implication carries us far from many current theories about fiction. For it means that 'human interest' is confined to problems, and thatevery good story is a problem story. Pretty soon we shall have to explain what a problem story is and incidentally clear away the easy but false supposition that it deals with only the acute and ultimate social issues, as the `problem play' does. For the moment, though, let us draw another distinction. Not ever/ problem awakens the kind of human interest which editors sigh for. A situation provoking thought is not inevitably suitable for fiction. If it were, all the innumerable puzzles of science and politics and hucksterdom would fall within its domain; yea, and even the questions the Walrus put to the Carpenter. Is a butterfly a moth, and if not, why not? There you have matter calling for some exercise of intellect; and yet it is obviously not to be threshed out by 0. Henry or Henry James. Although it awakens human interest, it is incompatible with the ideals of the short story. For it is not intrinsically dramatic. This fact at once suggests that there are several kinds of thought-provoking situations, and that only certain of these yield to the story teller's art. f. Three varieties of situations. A little reflection will show that situations may be classified with respect to the manner of managing them. Three types thereupon appear: Those which can be managed by action alone. Thus, the dodging of a missile; rebuffing a person who seeks to tempt you with some outrageous offer; grasping a friend's arm, as he slips on an icy sidewalk. In such cases you do not stop to think; you simply ' do the right thing'. Situations which can be managed with pure thought alone. For instance, multiplying 56 by 9; or discovering the motives of a supposed friend who has grossly insulted you; or laying bare a conspiracy, by inference from a chance remark you overhear in the street car. iii. Situations which can be managed only by thought and some consequent personal action. ' Thus, in A Coward, I Were this a book on the psychology of conduct, I should describe a fourth situation, namely that which can be managed only by thinking and simultaneous action. Here the action is not the consequence of prior thinking, as it is in the dramatic situation; rather is it an aid in thinking. Of this sort is all experiment. One reflects up to a certain point; then does something to test his provisional inferences or else to clarify the matter of the problem; and the predicament into which Maupassant brings the viscount; the unhappy man must first think a long time, but thinking alone will not solve his difficulty. Thought must be followed by action. And so too in every dramatic situation. Here we have come upon the mark of the species. g. The third type of situation fulfills only one ideal of the short story. In the primitive sense of the words, this kind of situation gives rise to the behavior called dramatic. Certainly the thinking it evokes displays human nature somehow, and certainly too the action that grows out of that thinking is 'in character'. Nevertheless, one might easily suggest a host of cases possessing these features and yet being too dull and colorless for fictional purposes. To give an extreme sample: a cook might inadvertently pepper a stew with roach powder three minutes before family and guests were to dine. There's a situation that ought to stir any ambitious culinary champion to deep thought. Cook might ponder desperately, torn between the impulse to fly into the Plutonian night and the impulse to open a can of soused mackerel and serve it in place of the wrecked stew. In the end, the fish might triumph over the flight; cook would clutch the can-opener desperately and march into the pantry. There you find all the elements of mere drama, and yet not the plot of even a weak short story. The trouble with it is the sharp decline in the last act. You may be moderately excited by the fatal dose of roach powder. You may wonder poignantly over the prospects of cook's blasted reputation or over the fate of the diners, if cook serves the stew. But, the minute you learn that mackerel are on hand to rescue so on, with constant interplay. For psychological and ethical purposes it is important to hold this variety of situation apart. But the story writer need not concern himself with it, beyond noticing its existence. cook from ignominy and the diners from hospital, the tension is over. You know that the finish will be calm, easy, and cheerful. In other words, there is one effect in the crucial situation of the episode, and another effect in the denouement; and this violates the second ideal of the short story. h. For the purposes of the short story, the complication, the crisis, and the denouement must be of either equal or ascending effectiveness. Nothing can be more deadly than the declining effect. It is even worse than a story which is dull throughout, for it awakens in you hopes of a thrilling end and then disappoints you. Few will hesitate to confirm this fact, and yet many persist in ignoring it when they turn to write fiction. I am continually amazed at the scant attention given by fairly capable authors to the sustained finish. They conjure up excellent dramatic situations and vigorous, sharply accentuated characters, but halt as soon as they have done that much. It may be that they fancy their heroines can work out their own skalvation and at the same stroke please the reader. At any rate, this delusion has been fostered and popularized by a literary school which some are pleased to miscall 'psychological realism'. The ideal of this school is to depict the stream of consciousness in its natural flow across a natural world. Given a certain character, what must he do in a certain situation? What impulses, feelings, or prejudices will dominate his conduct? It is, they say, the artist's task to answer this question pictorially. As Howells puts it: "the true plot comes out of the character; that is, the man does not result from the things he does, but the things he does result from the man, and so plot comes out of character, plot aforethought does not characterize ". Or, as one might say a little more exactly, the deliberate choice of a man in a given situation is the stuff of which a good story must be made. Now, for argument's sake, we might grant this much (though we deny it as a matter of fact); and yet we should have to repudiate the all too common inference from it, that all cases of a person choosing and shaping his conduct will serve the fictionist. No logic can extract this proposition from the original one, and only a narrow artistic theory can defend it against the army of adverse instances. Few indeed are the stories beloved of the world which depict the triumph of pure human nature; and many are those which, having done this, fail to delight the average cultured reader. In The Pursuit of the Piano' Howells himself has furnished a capital specimen for the refuting of his own theory. No jaded reader could ask for a more promising, whimsical situation than that which sets this story going. A soberly romantic lawyer chances to catch the name of a young lady on a boxed piano which, on its way to her New Hampshire home, passes the café window at which he sits breakfasting. On his journey to some friends the piano haunts him, bobbing up at every station. First idly wondering, then amused, then vexed, then jesting over it with his friends, the attorney finally, by dint of thinking much about the instrument and its owner, . . . But we must not tell the story just yet. Stopping here, you will surely sense the delightful possibilities of the odd encounter. Now, if the theory of psychological realism is sound, a good story would inevitably result from the depicting of the hero controlling and finishing up the complication, by the use of his own inner nature, his impulses, his desires, his fancies, his serious reflections. Unfortunately, though, it does not work out that way here. The inner history of Gaites, the lawyer, is faithfully drawn. Two or three hundred of his mental states are painstakingly recorded; and every turn, halt, and advance toward the end which such a man in just such an affair must attain is illuminated. But, for all that, the story ends flat—and the flatness is quite exasperating, in spite of the delicious predicament Gaites is brought into at the close. This predicament is irrelevant to the plot, —a mere adornment, albeit a good one. The story ends with the true lovers embracing in the Cloister; for then and there the initial complication solves itself, the pursuit of the piano is over, and the central character works out what we all hope is his salvation. Now, this entire scene is incomparably weaker than any before it. It neither thrills nor excites nor tickles nor alleviates nor even offends. It is just what a sane young man and a sane young woman would do, according to all the laws of mental balance and contemporary manners; which is to say that it is as undramatic as coffee and rolls. What does this suggest, if not that a real character seldom acts dramatically? Still less often does his conduct in a crisis appear dramatic to a spectator who sees all his inner motives, impulses, and directions in their entirety. Let us frame the truth with a paradox: let us say that most acts which are true to character are not characteristic. Much that a man does under the guidance of some impulse or sentiment may be consistent with the latter and yet may not imply it. Here once more we discover the dramatic effect resting upon a purely intellectual one. If you will turn to your Elements of Logic, you will find that any given proposition is implied by an infinite number of pairs of other propositions. Thus, to show that Socrates is mortal, you may assert that Socrates is an Athenian, and all Athenians are mortal; or that Socrates is a philosopher, and all phi losophers return to dust; or that Socrates is harassed by his wife, and that all men who live in such connubial conflict come to an untimely end; and so on, endlessly. It is for this purely logical reason that, if told only that Socrates is mortal, you do not know much about him. True as mortality is to his nature, it does not characterize it; it does not mark off this man from other creatures, nor does it indicate its own inner necessity. It is nothing more than a scrap of information, as unenlightening as it is true. For, though it is implied by Socrates' nature, it does notimplythis nature; and hence it is no genuine revelation. Now apply this distinction to character drawing. Suppose you wish to picture a cruel man. You will cast about for appropriate incidents. You may observe a cruel man for a long time and fdot dcwn all that he does. Much of this will doubtless flow from his harshness; he may squeeze his debtors, he may beat children, and he may know no gratitude. But can you, merely by setting down such episodes, be sure of revealing the villain's personality? . Not at all. For all such acts, though involved in the trait of cruelty, do not necessarily involve this trait. A kind man in desperate straits may squeeze debtors; a gentle neurasthenic lady may beat children mercilessly, when she is `having a spell'; and a merely stupid man may be thankless toward his benefactors. These acts, therefore, carry in themselves no final, irresistible conviction about their perpetrators; for a great variety of temperaments, appetites, and passing emotions may terminate in such conduct. Not even the psychological inevitability of their happening in a given situation lends them any genuine significance. A sneeze is more inevitable than a woman's decision in a love affair. A sane man's resolve to come indoors when it rains is more inevitable than his resolve to forgive an enemy. But which is more dramatic? Which reveals the character? We may, in conclusion, bring the matter into relation with the other ideal of the short story, the single effect. The writer who begins with a character supposed to have a certain trait and with a situation in which this trait is to be developed must, of course, live up to his promises. He must persuade us that his hero is just the sort of person intended. Now, if the hero's conduct ismerely consistent throughout the tale, his nature will be equivocal. If it is equivocal, it is vague. If vague, it lacks the effect of a clear-cut character. Hence the story produces at least two effects, that of the initial situation and all its half-pledges, and that of the development. And, so, it has failed. i. The single effect in dramatic narrative is generally produced, not by depicting a mere problem, but by depicting a conflict. And this conflict ends in one of two ways: (a) it brings out an act which is uniquely characteristic of the actor, or else (b) it finishes with a merely consistent act of violation. These are the only two clearly marked types of conduct which hold the reader's interest to the last without altering its quality. a. The uniquely characteristic act. In an oft-cited remark to Maupassant Flaubert says: When you pass a grocer sitting at the door of his shop, a janitor smoking his pipe, a stand of hackney coaches, show me that grocer and that janitor, their attitudes, their whole physical appearance, embracing likewise . . . their whole moral nature, so that I cannot confound them with any other grocer or any other janitor. Make me see, in one word, that a certain cab horse does not resemble the fifty others that follow or precede it. This advice is sound, though not to be followed except in the handling of the most important features of a story, especially in character drawing and plotting. To catch individuality is the artist's highest achievement; for individuality is single in its effect and essentially dramatic, thus realizing the two virtues of brief fiction. An act which brings out this, the quality of the whole man, need not be exciting. It may be, apart from its setting, the veriest trifle, as it is in 0. Henry's The Moment of Victory, where the hero, bespangled with war medals, walks up to the girl who long ago had jilted him contemptuously and says to her: "Oh, I don't know! Maybe I could if I tried!" Being ignorant of the hero's previous deed and of the girl's cruelty, you would find little in this climax to interest you. But, as a revelation of Willie Robbins' career and soul, it is perfect. It is not simply the truth, it is the one truth that enlightens. b. The consistent act of violation. Please construe `violation' in its legal sense. It means disregard of law or custom. Thus it includes not only excesses of physical force but also every case of formal transgression, however mild or free . from appeal to brawn or malicious cunning. The splendid lie by which Jean Frangois cheated justice and saved his cowardly friend, in Coppêe's masterpiece, The Substitute, is no deed of brute force; but it does do violence to law and custom in that it delivered a criminal from justice and punished an innocent man. And so it falls well within our definition. So too does the horrible murder of the little boy in Merimêe'sMateo Falcone. It is not the outburst of passion nor the horror of its deed that makes it a sound dramatic ending. It is its human consistency which, added to the intensity of the act, warrants it. That is to say, a man living in Corsica and brought up as Mateo Falcone was would come to esteem loyalty above justice, even to the point of slaying his own son for betraying a criminal who had put his trust in the lad. This violates the reader's notion of law and order, as well as the official proprieties of Corsica. If it did not, the story's ending would be quite flat; it would not differ from the legalized hanging of a condemned murderer, which is an undramatic horror. May it not well be that a Corsican bandit would find Merimêe's grisly tale a tame moral story? For to him Falcone's deed would not appear at all unlawful. Its harshness would strike him as the unfortunate but necessary harshness of a wise custom wisely enforced. He would say that it was no more dramatic than defending oneself with a cane against street thugs. j. The three levels of conflict. We have said that the only situation suited to fictional presentation is that which, in real life, would stimulate the characters to thought and action. The broader structural features of such a situation have just been indicated; it now remains for us to point out the material of which it is made. This exhibits three pretty sharp forms: the conflict may lie between, • Man and the physical world. • • Man and man. • c. One force and another, in the same man. a. Man and the physical world. This is the primary battle of life, the battle which the coddled city-folk forget so easily. The struggle against a head-wind, the nursing of a pitiful corn crop through a desperate drought, the hungry searching for a rabbit in the bitter winter wood, the flight from wild beasts, and the escape from savage captors, —of such is still the life of the Lower Billion, who inhabit most of the earth beyond Fifth Avenue. Those who are not of the Lower Billion sometimes look down upon such adventures and sniff top-loftily at the `thrillers' which are written about them. But you must pay no heed to such talk. It is only the critics' backhanded way of saying that they are too far from raw life to understand it sympathetically. For the average reader, man's battle with nature will continue to be the most absorbing story theme, and man's triumphant conspiracy against nature's blind, dumb cruelty will remain the supreme story plot, until the last frontier has yielded to the moving picture show and the hotwater flat. And, even in that day, the adventure story will grip the young and the undereducated;for to these the world teems with mystery, perils, and sudden shocks. And they will read what they understand. b. Man and man. Society is a gigantic compromise whereby millions of people who differ from one another more widely than chimpanzee differs from orangoutang may rub up against one another with a minimum of offense. Excellent as the compromise is, in many respects, it is not and never will be so skilfully devised that every man may have what he wants and be rid of what irks him. In this unpleasant fact you have, reduced to lowest terms, the basic dilemma whicll generates thousands of story plots, all of which may fairly be called social. Two lads wooing the same lass; two workmen after the same job; two millionaires scheming against each other, to control a railroad; two politicians seeking the same contract; two ladies sighing to lead the Upper Ten of Hicksville; two school boys after the captaincy of the baseball team: these are headed for a very different battle from that which the wilderness hunter wages against lions and famine. They are matching desire against desire, faith against faith, personality against personality. It is in this field of conflicts that the average mature man of today finds his steadiest entertainment. And the reason for this lies on the surface of affairs. It is because fiction readers take deepest interest in what touches vitally their daily life. Adventure stories will thrill more sharply and be sought more eagerly in hours of utter relaxation. But they must yield to the social story, for they lack altogether its power of awakening thought and the more thoughtful emotions. There was an age when they did not wholly lack it; and that not so very long ago. As late as Shakespeare's day most people inhabited a world of freebooters, sudden wars, and irresistible plagues; a world whose brutal vicissitudes called for a man's best thinking and commanded his attention for a goodly part of his life. And so adventure had a reality and a seriousness even to the comfortable burgher and the office scrivener. It was not a thing apart from life. To the burgher the press-gang might come in the night and lure him aboard the King's four-decker, to brave the cutlasses of Barbary pirates, on far-off, sweltering seas. And the village clerk might become, on an instant's command, the go-between for lordly lovers or the spy of high intriguers. But these possibilities are no more. Ours are other dangers. We may be swindled by rascally promoters, or looted by. the tariff, or injured by society's foibles and superstitions; or caught in a conflict of morals; and so it is to these that our imagination will turn most freely and with the soberest, most sustained interest. c. One force with another, in the same man. This conflict furnishes the stuff of which the so-called psychological story is made. You see most clearly what it is, if you inspect one of its most admirable specimens, Markheim. The struggle which Stevenson here depicts is purely internal. It is all the murderer's struggle with himself ; or, more precisely, the conflict between two natures in him. The shopkeeper whom he slays is only an incidental presence; the real characters are the souls of Markheim. And so it is always in stories of this class. Such conflicts are not discerned by the greater public. It is not in the average man's power to analyze and interpret impulses, thoughts and emotions; or even to observe the flux of these accurately. Indeed, he is scarcely aware of their existence. He knows only the things which stir them into existence, and all his instinctive interestis in those same things, as it should be. There is no more reason for his being intimate with them than there is for his investigating minutely the workings of his heart valves or the chemical processes of his spinal cord. The immediate, the pressing problems of his life come from the world about him and from the people with whom he has to deal. What with the worries of business and politics and social affairs, Tom, Dick and Harry find scant time for musing over their private mental machinery. And Nature has wisely endowed them with little knack in that direction. Thus it appears that the three types of conflict appeal respectively to the three chief types of mind; the primitive, the socialized, and the intellectual. As we shall see later, this fact must influence both the construction and the literary manner of all stories. EXERCISES 1. Which qualities of a short story are given in the following? 2. Which are wholly lacking? 3. Which are suggested? A pathetic plea that a town be saved from desertion has come to the State Railroad Commission. It is from Theresa, 35 miles north of Milwaukee, a settlement of 350 inhabitants, which feels that it is really off the map because the Chicago, Minneapolis & Sault Ste. Marie Railway line was built about a mile and a half away from it. The citizens now ask that the road be compelled to build a spur track, and run trains so that it can realize its destiny. Theresa was an old-time fur trading post, established in 1842 by Solomon Juneau, son of the founder of Milwaukee, and named after his eldest daughter. Mary French Canadians went to live there, and the place at one time seemed to have a bright future. The indifference of the railroad, however, resulted in the building up of Theresa Station outside its old bounds, and in late years the enterprising younger people and immigrants have settled there instead of the original town. Population and prosperity have dwindled in the face of growth all about. For a long time this condition was permitted to go unchecked, but at length the "booster" has come and the Theresa Advancement Association has been formed. It is this organization that has appealed to the Railroad Commission in a quaint document. Here are some of its paragraphs: The town began to wane in the early 70's in business prominence because of the ever lacking transportation facilities. Our $16, 000 school has now only two departments and our district has lost the yearly State aid on account of incompetency. It even has not been successful to induce the retiring farmer as even he wants his accommodations yet and wants to spend the rest of his life in a town that is pressing gaily ahead instead of the one going to the contrary. P. , ailroad officials, however, say that it would not be worthwhile to serve the old town, and that it can never realize its ambition to become a metropolis. • Is the following report good material for a short • • story in its present form? If not, state precisely why not. • • Which type of story will it most easily make? • Explain your answer. A series of stormy sessions of the Hungarian Parliament at Budapest reached their climax today, when Julius Kovacs, a member of the Opposition, fired three shots at Count Tisza, President of the Chamber, and then shot himself in the temple. Count Tisza was unhurt, but Kovacs is believed to be dying. The shooting was due to Count Tisza's methods of quelling the attempts at obstruction and having offending members carried out by the police. Members of the Opposition who had been suspended on account of recent disturbances gathered in a café in the morning and proceeded in a body to the House. No attempt was made to prevent their entrance. This clemency is believed to be due to the fact that Count Tisza knew that cinematograph operators were stationed outside the Parliament Building to take pictures of the struggles of members with soldiers, and he wished to prevent such a blow to the prestige of the Chamber. The members, on reaching their seats, found themselves surrounded by police, who requested the intruders to retire. Some quietly obeyed, but other members of the Opposition raised shouts and caterwaulings against the President. Finally the entire Opposition were driven out of the hall by the police. Immediately afterward Count Tisza remarked: "Now that the House is cleared, there is no fear of a repetition of Wednesday's disgraceful scenes. We will proceed to work. " At that instant Deputy Kovacs forced his way into the press gallery, holding a revolver in his hand, and fire4' three shots at Count Tisza, crying: "There is still a member of the Opposition in the House. They are not all driven forth. I am he. " Then, turning his weapon on himself, he fired a bullet into his temple and fell to the ground. Count Tisza's first thought was for the Countess sitting in the gallery, and he made a reassuring gesture, but his wife, who had rushed screaming to the front at the first shot, sank back sobbing and unable to believe the evidence of her eyes that her husband was unhurt. Read George Meredith's The Tale of Chloe, The House on the Beach and The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, searching out the quality in each tale which makes toward or away from the short story ideal. Analyze The Tale of Chloe, especially with respect to the complexity of (a) the generating circumstances, (b) the plot complication, and © the character development. Which type of situation is dealt with in each of the following stories? Explain clearly your answers. Kipling, —The Man Who Would be King. Morris, Gouverneur, —An Idyl of Pelham Bay Park (in It). London, —The Sun-Dog Trail (in Love of Life). O'Grady, R. —Fettered (Harper's, May, 1912). Cather, Willa Sibert, —The Bohemian Girl (McClure's, August, 1912). Gibbon, Perceval, --The Murderer (Harper's, August, 1912). Oppenheim, James, —Clerks (Harper's, August, 1912). Norris, Kathleen, —S is for Shiftless Susanna (Everybody's, August, 1912). Which typeof conflict is portrayed in each of the following? Does any story depict two types? Kipling, R. , —HisChance in Life (in Plain Tales from the Hills). —Watches of the Night (Ibid. ). Henry, 0. , No Story (in Options). . Freeman, Mary Wilkins, —Old Lady Pingree (in A Humble Romance). Maupassant, —The Horla. Moore, G. , Homesickness (in The Unfilled Field). Stockton, F. R. , —The Lady, or the Tiger? Aldrich, T. B. , Marjorie Daw. category:Sources of plot